Portrait of Jacob Judah Leon Templo

This is one of three known portraits of Jacob Judah Leon Templo, who was famous for his elaborate wooden model of the Temple of Solomon, which he turned into a traveling exhibition and showed and lectured about at fairs in the Netherlands and in England. He also wrote treatises on the ark and cherubim, which he illustrated himself. This version of the portrait of him by the Jewish artist Shalom Italia appeared in Templo’s treatise on the cherubim. At bottom is a picture of the “tabernacle of Moses” on the left and, on the right, his imagined recreation of Solomon’s Temple.